A place to find news updates, legal analysis, and all official documents related to the various constitutional challenges to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010)

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Liberty University to file petition for certiorari next week

As reported by Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog, the plaintiffs in Liberty University v. Geithner plan to file a petition for a writ of certiorari at the Supreme Court next week. This is the case, of course, in which the Fourth Circuit (by a vote of 2 to 1) held that the Anti-Injunction Act (26 U.S.C. 7421) bars federal courts from hearing a pre-enforcement challenge to the minimum essential coverage provision. In its cert petition last week in HHS v. Florida, the United States contended that the Court should take up this question as well--either sua sponte, or by granting in Liberty University. There is no real chance that the Court could avoid this issue regardless, as Article III requires it to be satisfied of its own subject matter jurisdiction, no matter what the parties have argued (or included in their questions presented).